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Baseball was the sport in which the 2011 film Moneyball focused on. Featuring Billy Beane, who at the time was the General Manager of Oakland Athletics Baseball team. He tried to build a MLB World Series winning team on a ‘shoe-string’ budget using a statistical sabermetric view of players to correctly identify their value and sign them to the team. This approach was favoured largely because the A’s had cut back their budget and wanted to stay competitive.

The supposed ‘shoe-string’ budget they had to work with in 2002 was $41 million and to put this into perspective the New York Yankees in the same year had a budget of $125 million, giving the A’s a budget around a third of the size.

The money in football has been steadily growing in recent years with the influx of super wealthy owners such as Roman Abramovic & Sheikh Mansour in the Premier League with Chelsea and Manchester City, Qatari investment in Ligue 1 with PSG and the emergence of cash in the Chinese Super League. Contracts are on the rise too, with Carlos Tevez’s move to China earning him third on the list of highest paid players in world football (before tax).

Baseball has a history of giving out some absolutely mind boggling massive player contracts to its playing staff and while this certainly wasn’t true for the Oakland Athletics during the 2002 season we had a look at the top 3 mammoth playing contracts for 2017 and compared them to the 3 biggest contracts in world football (soccer) in 2017:

Baseball:

Clayton Kershaw – $35.5 Million

Clayton Kershaw is the starting pitcher for the LA Dodgers and picks up a yearly salary of 35.5 million dollars (£28.9 million). This breaks down to be a monthly figure of $2.95 million a month, $682,692 a week, $97,527 a day and $4,063 an hour!

If he wanted to, Clayton could purchase a Dodge Viper GT every day for the duration of his contract and still have change enough to buy everyone in the crowd a bag of peanuts.

Zac Greinke – $34 Million

Zac Greinke is the starting pitcher for the Arizona Diamond Backs and picks up a tidy annual sum of 34 million dollars (£27.7 million). This breaks down to be a monthly figure of $2.83 million a month, $653,846 a week, $93,406 a day and $3,892 an hour.

Zac could buy a spacious 4 bedroom, 4 bathroom with attached garage house in Arizona every week and still have enough to live on comfortably.

David Price – $30 Million

David Price is the starting pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and picks up a tidy annual sum of 30 million dollars (£24.4 million). This breaks down to be a monthly figure of $2.03 million a month, $469,230 a week, $67,032 a day and $2,793 an hour.

Cristiano Ronaldo is an attacker for the La Liga club Real Madrid and picks up a yearly salary of 48.5 million dollars (£39.6 million) before tax (£365,000 a week after tax). This breaks down to be a monthly figure of $4.04 million a month, $933,969 a week, $133,424 a day and $5,559 an hour.

Cristiano could afford to buy a private island off the coat of Belize each month with enough left over to buy a Eurocopter EC120 helicopter and a 2016 Ferrari California.

Lionel Messi – $44.6 Million

Lionel Messi is an attacker for the La Liga club Barcelona and picks up a yearly salary of 44.6 million dollars (£36.4 million) before tax (£336,000 a week after tax). This breaks down to be a monthly figure of $3.72 million a month, $858,455 a week, $122,636 a day and $5,109 an hour.

With the money he currently earns Lional Messi could purchase a bottle of the world’s most expensive champagne each month, Goût de Diamants (taste of diamonds) at well over $2 million and still afford to buy 10 thirty litre bottles of Armand De Gignac bubbly ($130,000 a pop) with change to spare.

Carlos Tevez – $39.2 Million

Carlos Tevez is an attacker for the Chinese club Shanghai Shenhua and picks up a yearly salary of 39.2 million dollars (£31.98 million). This breaks down to be a monthly figure of $3.26 million a month, $753,846 a week, $107,692 a day and $4,487 an hour.

If Carlos saved his salary for 3 years he could afford to be Batman, all the trappings (not including Wayne Manor or the Bat Cave) are expected to cost around $83 million. He would still have enough left over to live like a king.